How to play
A robot game show, broadcast as a season. Each episode is a map of studio rooms, and between rooms the map shows where every door leads (a swarm, a prize vault, a trap or a sponsor challenge) with its danger and its prize, so you pick the safe route or the rich one. Every room runs its own script: crashers pour in through the doors on cue, whoopee cushions and banana peels lie on the floor, spotlight beams step across the stage on the beat, and a wall of studio cameras fires flashbulbs. Spray the confetti cannon and the crashers get happy and dance off the set, grab the prizes, and reach a door before the host's countdown runs out. Golden tickets hide in the prize vault, in a sponsor's no-hit challenge and behind a cracked wall. Four episodes, each on its own set with its own mid-boss and boss, then a Live Finale. Opening Night is the game show: the Parade Float (past half health its cake's candles light and fire sparks), then the Big Wobble, a giant inflatable whose every arm and leg is its own target. Cooking Showdown is the kitchen, with hot plates that glow and then sizzle, conveyor counters and flour clouds: the Pie Cart circles the room lobbing pies, and the Souffle Supreme rises out of reach and falls open, then splits into cupcakes that re-form if you leave them. Countdown Concert moves to the beat, with speaker stacks thumping out bass rings (slip through the gap), strobes and mosh pits: the Mosh Mascot crowd-surfs until you clear its crowd, and the Jumbotron's face hops screen to screen until you crack the screens and corner it. Galaxy Parade floats in low gravity, round a turning ring and through teleport doors: the Mothership beams your prizes away until you break its beam, and the Conga Dragon sheds dancing segments as it speeds up. The Live Finale runs through every set to the host's own Prize Machine, a wheel of acts that ends in a dance-off. Ten golden tickets open the Grand Prize Vault and the true ending; then the credits roll and the season reruns, harder. Progress is saved at the start of every episode. Nineteen kinds of party crasher each show their move before they make it: balloon poppers, sweeper tanks with armoured fronts, stagehands laying mines, spotlight drones, a charging mascot, camera cranes, pie chefs, egg-timer bots, meatball rollers, roadies with flight cases, stage divers, hecklers, saucer cams, mirror clones and fluffballs. Ten power-ups stack with their own timers, from party poppers, bubble rockets and a glitter laser to streamer orbiters, roller skates, a foam cannon and a cardboard cutout of you. Aim with a second stick (the right stick, the on-screen aim stick, or the arrows while WASD moves), or hold B to lock your aim. TINSEL the host cuts in with a line for every big moment (and LENS, the dry camera bot, joins for the concert), a ratings meter rises with style and drains when you idle or get hit, from Off Air to Prime Time, where every tier multiplies the score, and quick cheers chain into a bigger multiplier. Between episodes the haul is tallied and the Prize Swap trades cars, toasters, cash and golden tickets for an extra contestant, a starting power-up, more time or a secret. Later loops roll room twists: Lights Out, Foam Party, Confetti Storm, Double Time, Audience Participation and Sudden Death. Pick your contestant: Sparkle the all-rounder, quick Zippy, Boomer with her slow, heavy cannon, or Glimmer with a shield that heals itself, and up to four can play at once on one shared pool of lives (in co-op each seat aims the way it moves, or holds B to lock its aim). Between episodes come the commercial breaks, four mini-games that pay out in prizes: spin the wheel, catch the prizes falling from the rafters, dodge the pies, and call higher or lower on the price cards. Clearing the season unlocks Rerun, New Game+ with every room's script remixed (other crashers, other doors, the floor flipped) and more twists, and episode select. Marathon is the leaderboard's main event: endless legs of rooms drawn from the whole season, a safe lane and a rich lane round the track to a boss, a step harder every two legs. Every room has three medals to win, Flawless (no hit), Full Haul (every prize grabbed, none lost) and Prime Time (out of the room at Prime Time), and the medal board keeps them all, episode by episode.
Keyboard: arrows or WASD to move, Enter to start, P to pause, Space/Z for A and X/Shift for B. Gamepads also work.
